>>64899Cause the ship was just thrown across the galaxy. Fire suppression was down. There's plenty of times the Enterprise is on fire too when it's damaged.

Did you want everyone standing around in a pristine, smokeless environment, saying 'the ships really in trouble cause these indicators only we can read say so, good thing there's no dramatic visual cue that might raise the tension...'

In season one at the end of one of the episodes Picard tells Troi she's buying at this bar they're heading to. Then at the end of the season, after the Romulans return, Picard goes on his spiel about how money no longer has meaning because everyone's material needs are taken care of. Then what the fuck are credits supposed to be?

They probably have some kind of production currency or something allocated by a committee set up by the Federation. They allocate the currency based on their perceived / calculated needs of the citizens, so that the proper material transactions can take place. Of course this could contribute to things like nepotism and social hierarchies (I know a guy in the committee and he got me approved to buy this mining outpost or w/e).

Or maybe it's a currency that's floated at a fixed ratio to other galactic currencies such a latinum, or whatever the romulans and klingons use. Then it would be strictly used for interstellar trade and acquiring things from neighboring civilizations.

Or it could be that members of Starfleet are given certain stipends in foreign currencies to spend on shore leave at non-Federation planets.

IDK, it could be any number of things but still have an essentially moneyless *consumer* economy within the borders of the Federation.

>>65007I'm pretty sure the Federation either doesn't pay people at all or pays them a pathetic wage of credits plus a good amount of replicator rations based on rank

You can't replicate 9999 guitars because you have to have enough rations.. for instance, watch the s2 e1, Geordi talks about how replicating this complex component will take a lot of power and several hours. He even recommends shutting down some non essential systems to divert power.. And that's with the low resolution industrial replicators, not the high resolution medical or food replicators.. so it seems with a ship of 1000+ people that's going to be a logistical nightmare without some sort of system

>>65011I also recall that on TNG transporter use was rationed in some manner. My head canon is foggy on the details, but I think it was Picard who told Wesley he "used up a years worth of transporter credits going home every weekend from the academy." Obviously there is some sort of scarcity when it comes to transporter use too. Which would make sense since the transporter and the replicator are basically the same fucking thing. Just energy/matter converters.

It is though a bit hard to figure out how things are managed on Earth. It is a post-scarcity culture, yet necessity would dictate that some things have to be controlled. Otherwise you do end up with some asshole making 9999 guitars and hogging the equipment.

Also, how did people on DS9 get paid? They had full on gambling and whoring on that thing. The crew had to be getting something that they could either convert to latinum.

>>65015I imagine day to day stuff is basically free. But it's situational. The limit for everything is basically energy and stuff that's complex to replicate. So food, clothes, the odd toy isn't going to be material normally, especially if you're on a planet where you can go get things and recycle them. I mean if you run low on power and need to eat you can go get some native plants and turn them into energy, they grow back. Transporting people probably is quite expensive in energy terms as nothing will be 100% efficient, the energy probably gets stored at the transmission end while the receiver has to use its own reserves. There's got to be a cost for transmitting the data and lots of loss when creating. Replication cannot be 100% efficient.

I think rationing isn't about pay, its about there being one source of energy and rationing ensuring you have all the power you need to keep going. This is why rationing seems fairly subjective. A ship is floating around in the void for ages with no sources of fuel will need to make it last. Using power for stuff and then constantly recycling it is going to create even more waste than just using simple ration packs with little packaging, probably designed to feed people well for the amount of energy used.

Anyway I imagine the transporter credits thing is because transporting a lot probably is a drain especially with thousands of staff and students. I imagine computer and replicator time is a small issue but it's probably not a bottleneck very often.

its post scarcity day to day but high energy cutting edge tech is still limited. Pretty much by energy.

Remember, there's two sorts of consumption. Wants and needs. Wants are infinite, you can never actually satisfy them because we always want something new. Post scarcity just means all needs are satisfied, though usually everyone gets a few wants too. In lean times limited resources for the federation means less of your wants are satisfied, getting everyone's needs covered isn't going to be issue outside disasters and wars.

>>65017The way replicators are currently depicted (converts energy straight into matter in a specified configuration) they must have two properties:

Require at least the same amount of antimatter/matter pair equivalent energy for everything they produce. (Conservation of energy)

Be over 99.999% efficient or they'd incinerate everything on use. (again)

The less obvious part is the act of moving the matter into the right place. But suffice it to say if it would be anything besides materializing the stuff in the right place without losses is the only way to make sure it actually comes out the way you intended, so it must be even more efficient than the process to generate the matter. It also means the act of placing the matter takes almost no energy itself because it would have to be dissipated somewhere,

That said I doubt that rationing of transporters comes from energy needs, rather from the scarcity of expertise to produce and operate the equipment safely.

>>65020Then the question is, why are transporters not simpler and widespread between TOS and TNG? In fact, thanks to STD, we now "know" that point to point transmission sans a booth or pad was old tech by the time TNG comes around. You'd think there would be like mad transporters everywhere because the law of tech dictates that tech like a transporter becomes cheaper and simpler to use as time goes by. With ENT it was barely usable for biomatter. By TOS it was a pretty common-place way to get around and you had the advanced point to point that only shows up in TNG. Transporters should have been mad advanced by TNG and instead were just ummmm...transporters. I guess maybe they had a longer range or some shit...but you'd think that rationing for this shit would be laughable because the tech will have proliferated like wildfire and advanced to crazy levels.

Also, was the holodeck rationed? My head canon comes up empty on that. If matter replication is rationed, then the holodeck must be like 70 years of "want" fabrication credits for like 1 minute. All that thing does is manipulate matter like a mother fucker. Must be the craziest thing to run in terms of resources. Not does it have to make, it also has to convert matter back into energy when an item is no longer needed/seen. Shit, the holodeck should by all right be taking like 90% of the ship's power.

>>65020They do incinerate a lot of stuff. They recycle things all the time. I don't think it's possible to be that efficient once you account for the processing power used by the computer, redundant systems, buffers and so on. The actual process may be close to that sort of efficiency but there's no way the process doesn't use a lot more energy.

The point about dissipating energy is a good one, if the process isn't efficient the waste would have to go somewhere but we don't know where the waste would go. If you can materialise matter from energy then their heat pumps must also be extremely efficient and effective. Moving the matter seemed like it'd take energy to me but then if the matter goes through subspace or something it might not be moving against a force so actually it could be very efficient to move matter.

I still think its less efficient but the loss isn't during the creation process but rather extra energy needed to perform the task without loss. It's not say 95% efficient because there's 5% loss but because 105.3% of the energy of the object is needed to get it made with the rest going into computing, pumped heat, the transporter noise, light, perhaps other emissions, perhaps its radiated in subspace etc.

>It's not say 95% efficient because there's 5% loss but because 105.3% of the energy of the object is needed to get it made with the rest going into computing, pumped heat, the transporter noise, light, perhaps other emissions, perhaps its radiated in subspace etc.

Yeah, this would be the only way out, something akin to what shields do. This would imply that deflector shield technology is a prerequisite to almost any tech you see in trek... Dealing with waste energy by dumping it into a null dimension... let's hope it's uninhabited. In a sense this is necessary anyway since normally the only way to get rid of waste heat in space is by black body radiation, and I'm sure all the inhabitants and equipment generate enough of it that a galaxy class would be way beyond the temperature we would consider cosy.

>>65058There are several uses of wideband phaser beams throughout the series, but the most egregious error in NOT having them used was the Siege of AR15 or whatever it's designation is. It would have changed the whole episode.

>>65058I'm watching TOS an "wide spread" weapons are used a lot in it. Including setting Enterprise's phasers to "stun" and knocking out a bunch of gangsters. Which seems like it would be used more. I mean, anything goes hinky and you just knock everyone in a square mile radius out and then go in to clean up later. Simple.

>>65059>>65061This episode also highlights the glaring absence of personal forcefields. We know it's possible, because it should be. And because we've seen it and seen it mentioned a few times. TAS might not be considered canon (though it should), but simply extending that forcefield technology to be a space suit was pretty ingenious. I suppose First Contact's space suits look more "realistic", but it honestly is pretty weird how every aspect of life advanced... except space suits. To the point where Worf has to tie off a leak with a severed Borg limb. Even ENT's suits were more advanced!

I'd be happy with a random explanation, too. Technology limitations make it impossible for forcefields that small to be reliably used in the field. It's a stretch, given the rest we see. I mean, that episode has landmines that aren't only invisible, but hide in an entirely seperate kind of reality.

I still like the episode. It does what it's supposed to do, and rolling out a series of new props for the weapons and gear Starfleet land forces would most likely have is unreasonable. Kind of like how that episode with Jake mentions "hoppers" as some sort of planetary transport, but never shows them.

But still, if I got dumped into the Trek universe, I'd get me a personal forcefield. Klingon tries to stab you? Personal forcefield. Exploding consoles? Personal forcefield. Holodeck restrictions malfunction? Personal forcefield. Sucked into the void of space? Personal forcefield. Oh, but it burns out after one disruptor hit? I don't care. I've seen what disruptors do to people. That's one hit that doesn't kill me, bitch.

Unless it explodes on your belt. I can imagine Starfleet technology doing that. But if it then also takes out my assailant if he's in close quarters, I'm counting it as a plus.

yeah I mean come onyou have to have seen enough scifi shit to know that sort of thing will cause a bisubtamius partical intefference with the positron emitter rays on the display screen and rip your balls off or something

>>65111Also if the forcefield is strong enough to stop a kinetic blast it's most certainly strong enough to close in on you and crush you within a skintight prison.

In general though security forces should be much better equiped than some spandex and a "lasergun". I get the whole "The Federation isn't a military organisation" thing but c'mon, it's not like current countries or organisations today have their defense/security forces on equal foot with civilians.Oh and nevermind the giant lasers and warp-capable bombs these space vessels carry, I guess that's fine, but once they're close and personal enough to see the whites of their eyes (or w/e colour) the only means of defence or fighting is an unergonomic powerpoint laser.

>>65112Even if they reject the notion of defense they don't have PPE? And that PPE being able to absorb a few hits wouldn't hurt.

UNLESS. You're against an enemy with stun weapons. Your PPE will stop the stun but if they make bigger guns you'll still die. Essentially you disincentivise using just enough power to knock you out and thus your dudes get killed.

Of course against people who just kill you'd put the armour on so even if it's off by default because you don't want to give invader vibes you should have it laying around. Much like a civilian firefighting outfit you have several sets of gear for different environments. Even they have considered bulletproof shit for certain environments and there are designated security forces to fight while they pull people out.

So what I'm saying is default away mission being spandex is fine. But I agree it's shocking they don't have armour with a built in deflector array, self sealing environmental protection, perhaps power assisted melee mode for punching klingon heads off.

When nitpicking combat scenes you have to keep in mind the writers perspective.

The whole "why didn't they use X" quickly becomes ridiculous when you consider all options that post TNG level tech enables you to do.

Faced with bunch of klingons and have a ship in orbit?Fine I'd rig up all replicators to spout out head sized UAVs with impulse drive, inertial dampers, phasers, scanners and shields. Then site to site transport them to the surface and watch.You could even equip them with a transporter relay to keep up your superior starfleet morals and beam the stunned hostiles to your brig.

>>65114The problem is complicated replicator items take more time and power than foodstuffs. I think it's S2E1 of TNG where Geordi asks Picard to transfer power from non essential systems because he needs 512 biohazard containment modules. He also mentions it's going to take several hours to replicate them all. So your idea is only sound if you have a few days of prep time and plenty of dilithium.

>>65115Yeah, there also would have been a pretty easy hand-wave for that.

>"Sorry captain because the phase shifted chirality of antimatter we can't transport a photon torpedo." Oh and VOY even explicitly ruined that too because you know pocket universe bandits steal antimatter using transporters.

>>65116You are right, in canon the explanation makes sense. Not really from a nit-picker perspective though, they should have said computing resources instead of energy needs because the bulk of energy for replication must come from energy matter conversion which is the same for any amount no matter what it is.

>>65113I suppose this also belongs in the head canon thread, but I've always figured that Starfleet uniforms have at least *some* sort of fancy protective weave in them. They have to, given how often we see people survive direct hits from energy weapons or contact with superheated plasma. In fact, the most common plasma injuries seem to be on the hands and face. That is, the unprotected parts. When do they ever roll in a casualty and they say he got the stuff on his junk? Never!

>>65114We've seen drones a few times, though. One in that sub-par TNG episode with the dead planet of the arms dealers, and a bunch of them in Insurrection, when the Son'A use them to tag people for transport, exactly as you suggest. Two are also used (but not seen) by the crazy Cardassian with the plasma burns (which he seemed to have survived fine enough, due to the Cardassian probably also using protective technology in their uniforms) to deliver a transporter disruptor and an explosive device.

I think we can assume that they're less useful in situations where people are actually prepared for them. I mean, you could replicate your own, smaller drones specifically built to hunt down the anti-people drones. And then you get into miniaturization drone warfare, and I'm sure no-one actually wants that.

>>65118They tested security cameras on the Constituion Class, but when it was needed all Starfleet learned was how easily it could be manipulated and how retarded the layout of the captain's chair control panel was.

>>65114I think a simpler explanation on why the crew doesn't ever think to use drones is that drones didn't exist, even as that big of a concept in sci-fi, at that time. As late as the 2000s people were still making movies about the 'killer robot fighter' that proved that, after all, you needed good red-blooded 'muricans piloting your jets.

OT, anyone remember the first time the Cypher drones showed up in Metal Gear Solid 2? How much of a mindfuck was that at the time? People in 20 years will see that, and won't even understand why it's a plot point -- 'its just a drone, so what?'

>>65164Section 31, because Borg-Whippin-Weapons will be helpful.Plus it's conceivable that the time-police comes from that timeline in the first place. Not only that it would make sense that it's one of the few timelines where the UFP is still around considering how determined the Borg Queen was to rekt Earth.

>>65175They meet pre-warp civilizations plenty of times, when they are already aware of spacefaring life. Not all civilizations will observe a prime directive, so there could be plenty of worlds that have been told of space without being able to get there.

>If there is one timeline where Earth survived there are infinite timelines where Earth survived.

True that.But infinities have a strange way of subtracting each other. Infinite numbers can be expressed using ordinals. Where w1 is the first ordinal and w2 the second.w2 - w1 = w2Sorry for geeking out on that, just saying that if something is infinite there is something so much larger that the former infinite is negligible by comparison.

>>65179Mr Mot knows his infinite sets! And indeed this type of mindbending math would come into play in this situation.

If anything I'd say the timecops try to maximize the number of universes in which the Federation survives, sometimes letting Janeway, Kirk, Sisko or others get away with bullshit to achieve those ends. I believe section 31 is sort of a retroactive sleeper cell for time cops to achieve these ends, and that eventually, no matter what they do, the time traveling arm of the future federation loses when the temporal cold war goes hot and somehow transform into the Q. But maybe I'm wrong.

>> 31 is sort of a retroactive sleeper cell for time cops to achieve these ends, and that eventually, no matter what they do, the time traveling arm of the future federation loses when the temporal cold war goes hot and somehow transform into the Q

Best headcanon, you win the internet Guinan.

Can sec 31 timecops be one of the 3941985 new trek shows in production CBS plz?

>>65180I dunno, I think the Q were excited by humans. If they knew we'd become them they'd be miserable. I mean they are bored as fuck to the point they meddle. A new race of upstarts as equals who will either bring them new ideas or supplant them either by culture or force is the most exciting thing they have to look forward to.

31 being a sleeper cell though, why not? That's actually cool because their agenda and goals would be twisted over time to suit the current federation making them puppets as a gloriously ironic twist.

But Q tells Riker this explicitly in "Hide and Q." He says that unlike other species humans have an insatiable drive to progress, and thus the Q study them because they believe we one day have the potential to evolve to their level.

>>65186I meant we won't literally become them, you're right but that's not what I meant and maybe I'm wrong about what Guinan meant. Evolving to their level and actually just being Q are pretty much opposite outcomes in terms of the ennui of the omnipotent immortals.

As per the humans reaching the same level as the Q versus humans literally being Q, I'm not sure there's as much difference as one would think. Sure, they do at first seem to be opposite outcomes.. but perhaps they are just on opposite sides of an infinite moebius loop, if you will. At the level of evolution the Q are, they would be drastically different than whatever they were before. Even if they did come from us, they would think us no more their ancestors than a salamander would be. The Q existence is so far removed from mortal life, that they would have surely lost touch with their humanity and human notions of reverance for those that came before.

That being said, I didn't necessarily mean we'd literally become Q, but reaching that level of non corporeal godlikeness, it seems almost all entities would be effectively the same, save for how they choose to represent themselves. In effect, can you really say it would make a difference what something was before it transcended to godhood? It seems that such power would shape a consciousness and change it, that whatever "humanity", for lack of a better term, or uniqueness I suppose, came before would slowly erode under the practical inevitabilities of such an existence.

And it might also stand that the only blindspot in a Qs existence is their own history, not because of some barrier or magic, but because of their own ego. We see the Q to be the epitome of the ego, and in human experience the ego often shields the conscious mind from that which it cannot or does not want to accept. This is why many people have bad habits or failings, because they don't realize they exist. Because they don't want to. In a similar sense, it is perhaps too embarrassing and too shameful to embrace that the Q originate from a petty squabbling child race of naked pinkish brownish apes, so all but the Q we know best don't even think about it. Maybe that's even what makes our Q such a rebel amongst his own kind.

65187 >>65190I honestly think unpacking what the Q represent is some of the most high-level analysis you can do on Trek, so I approve of this general direction of the thread.

I think there is a third option between 'we are separate beings that are merely on the same evolutionary track' and 'we somehow retrocausally actually *are* the Q', although it's a little mystical. Now, we know the Q appear as separate entities, and that there can even be conflict among Q. They also as was mentioned are tremendously egotistical. However, how much of this is their genuine personality and how much of it is a way for them to interface with beings at our level? Is having a grandiose ego and representing themselves as separate beings just another level of 'I appear to thee as a fellow ship's captain, that thou mayest understand me better' ? (Are Picard/Riker/Sisko/Janeway's egos ever really that much smaller than Qs? Is this a betta fish in a mirror situation?)

What if evolution, in a cosmic sense, is not like a thousand different rays emanating from a star, but infinite beams of light falling into a gravity well, i.e. that evolution necessarily converges down particular paths rather than diverging forever? (There are in-universe suggestions of this, Hodgkin's law of parallel planetary development, Sargon's people, "Transfigurations," "The Chase," basically any time we are moralized to by lightbulbs, etc...)

What if Q really are 'God' in an absolute sense, in the sense of a conscious entity at the absolute ultimate level of possible advancement, whose mind is coterminous with existence? If the Q are that, and the humans are also that at some point, how could there *be* two? They would be only one. Even if they all originally started as separate life forms on trillions of worlds in an infinity of universes, by merging with that omega-point-singularity level of development, they become ultimately the self-same one. IDIC.

I think this is also one of the only ways to resolve the apparently contradictory origin stories for the Q given in TNG and VOY (that they evolved from material beings in the former, that they existed from the beginning of time in the latter.)

>>65222I do think the different personalities indicates they didn't completely converge.

I think they'd be necessary to avoid boredom and perhaps the Q elected to retain some differences. Or perhaps through random chance they experienced different things, perhaps through their slight differences and this continued to change them. It should be noted that the genes of all races were somewhat engineered by the lonely guys, so convergent evolution may not be a natural phenomenon.

However what if the Q are not all from the same species? Does each Q represent a whole species?

If I'm honest I'm not sure the writers ever pinned down Q. I think they knew it would be more interesting to leave them ambiguous and not even know themselves than to pin it down.

>>I do think the different personalities indicates they didn't completely converge.

It certainly could be. In my interpretation, that itself is merely part of their attempt to represent themselves to entities that have distinct personalities. What if they are like the personalities of the gods in polytheistic myths, which are basically representations of aspects of an individual psyche? Original Q is pride, Quinn is self-doubt and grief, Lady Q is vanity, etc. Like the Kelvans, they could be thought of as a unified being whose limbs are so individually articulate and intelligent that they appear as entities in their own right.

>> I think they knew it would be more interesting to leave them ambiguous

I think this is definitely the truth of the matter, which is kind of why the Q episodes perpetually get worse.

>>65235They do suggest turning the program off, and what prevents that from happening is that Geordi's authorization to the computer to make an enemy that could defeat data authorized the computer to take control of the systems it would need to do that, including the holodeck. We have to assume then that controlling the power supply to the holodeck is one of those aspects that was locked down by that command.

In TNG 3x06 @27:40 Geordi says the Enterprise has ten's of thousands of light years on it.

According to Voyager, a thousand light-years takes about a year to travel, that would mean the Enterprise-D would have been traveling for over ten years. However the Enterprise-D was new just over two years ago in TNG 1x01.

>>65304This is definitely an error, because the writers never had a consistent understanding of actually how fast the warp speeds were (and they never really did come down on it.)

However, very strictly speaking, it's not incorrect. The Enterprise traveled to at least to Triangulum (it's not known if the 'mind dimension' area was actually a place or another dimension) in 'Where No One Has Gone Before,' which is well over ten thousand lightyears away.

In TNG 4x04 @39:00 The Talarian gives the Enterprise exactly 5 minutes to return his adopted son, why do aliens in Star Trek use Earth time measurements? I mean if the universal translator is translating native time units, surely they wouldn't be round numbers like 5 minutes?

I feel like this is just something they do because it doesn't matter from a narrative point of view whether it's 5 minutes or 4 minutes 47 seconds and 2 milliseconds, at the end of the day they'll do the thing in time or they won't. It's crossed my mind but I think doing it properly would be tedious and would add very little beyond that accuracy. The show has limited time so they can also fit more of Worf being beaten up in that way. Then it makes it even more stark when they can't translate which is also useful.

>The Romulan general sucked at physics problems though >a starfleet officer, even a shit one like Chipotle would have solved a romulan replicator saying "What is Celcius in Onkians" easily>Water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C I'd like water at 5C please.

>>65366To be fair, they go out of their way to point out they are converting to 'Earth time units' a couple of times in TOS. In fact, one line directly implies that they no longer actually use the system of hours and minutes (even though they clearly do) when Not-Lincoln asks Kirk if they still measure time in minutes and seconds and he says 'we can convert to it.'

One assumes, like a lot of the things established in TOS and not brought back up, that they knew people would get tired of hearing it over and over again, and figure pointing out they know it's a simplification once is good enough for the egg-heads who care about such things. They're probably right.

In TNG 4x18 @11:20 Geordie says "La Forge to Enterprise" without tapping his com-badge. So what's the deal, are they voice activated? If so how come we normally see people tap their com-badge? Was it just a mistake?

>>65469Pretty much. This was an even worse problem in TOS, where there are tons of totally illogical distances/speeds given. Remember, the Enterprise travels to the center of the galaxy during the runtime of Final Frontier, but this took the Voyager, a much faster ship, years to cross. Fanon folks have often used the concept of a 'subspace gradient' which causes warp speed to fluctuate under certain conditions, to try to explain away these inconsistencies (which stemmed from never having set proper distance/speed parameters for the writers during the pre-production phase.)

Uh, but maybe 4x15 happens after 4x19, and the Cytherians dropped off the Enterprise closer to their next destination.

>>65470I mean, the AI of the Enterprise-D is clearly sentient, though no one wants to admit even the possibility of it until 'Galaxy's Child.' I assume that the communicators are always listening, and uses machine learning to determine if you are speaking to it or not. The tapping of the communicator may merely be protocol to confirm you want to use the communicator. Imagine if a crew member was paralyzed or trapped such that they couldn't touch their communicator -- you'd want it to still be able to function. But

>> Was it just a mistake?

Surely. They probably liked the take so much they kept it despite the mistake.

>>65503Aren't most of those times on the bridge where I assume the comuter just records eveyr thing any way and sends orders as specified. There are a lot of times when Picard just starts yelling at Geordi across the ship with out prompting the computer.

>>65504Uhhh....maybe the script had 'big margin FOR error' which isn't really a saying but at least isn't exactly wrong.

Everything about Generations to me is like a fever dream though. Nothing makes sense, everything is rushing forward with only this symbolic sort of connection with events, it's mostly just old white dudes yelling at each other while strenuously attempting minor athletic feats.

When you look at the history of how they shot that thing back to back with Season 7 and how crazy that had to make EVERYONE in the production, I think we were lucky the movie didn't open with just 2 hours of footage of Patrick trashing the inside of his trailer screaming 'MOON MAN KILL ALL! MOON MAN KILL ALL!'

In TNG 5x09 @13:50 The time traveller asks Riker what's the most important example of progress in the last 200 years, Riker replies "The warp coil". This would place it at least 100 years after the events of First Contact

In TNG 5x09 @14:10 Worf says there were no phasers in the 22nd century, this contradicts Enterprise which is set in the 2150's.

Well, strictly speaking, we don't know how Cochrane's Phoenix's warp drive functioned. We know later drives featured warp coils, but maybe that was a refinement.However my personal headcanon on this one is that Riker is just a dumbass who doesn't really remember how long ago warp travel was discovered. It's not really an important aspect of his job, which he is quite good at, after all.

>> there were no phasers in the 22nd century

This was actually consistent with lore at the time. In 'The Cage' the handheld weapons were called lasers. Thus people probably assumed that handheld phasers were developed in the ten years between The Cage and TOS (of course in that same show they say warp was only discovered in the past ~50 years, but they really tried to bury that.) Then Enterprise comes along and says 'we can't have Trek without phasers!' (or face-to-face communication, or transporters, or any of the other technology that was already established to not exist yet, mostly in 'Balance of Terror') and so they just decided to say to hell with it and retroactively made all those other shows wrong. Which means it's really Enterprise that was wrong.

>>65568They were energy beings of some kind, that's all we knew about them. I think the gag was 'Q, formerly the biggest lightbulb being of all, has pissed off all the merely semi-omnipotent rather than nearly-omnipotent beings in the galaxy, and once human, they naturally both know instantly and come knocking.'

I think this is supposed to mainly supposed to be an inside gag for people familiar with TOS, in which there are a litany of ever more omnipotent lightbulb lightforms, to which Q was naturally seen as the ultimate evolution.

>>65506I always figured that's the case, too. But I wonder what it ACTUALLY is like. Like how much does the computer need to hear before it starts sending it to Geordi? It must take a couple words at least, so then Geordie is hearing Picard fromf like a 5 second delay probably. Everyone is hearing delayed messages and that's fuckin crazy.

>>65737maybe there's a ramped delay, so it's normal five seconds behind but once it starts feeding signal down to engineering it speed up what they get down there so by fifteen seconds into it or something it's realtime

>>65748Well we know the Universal Translator works by 'mapping the common cognitive patterns of all thought' or whatever bullshit Kirk says when he introduces it. So even by the 23rd century the computers aboard starships had the capability of reading neural impulses directly. So maybe the computer knows Picard is going to call Geordi before he ever even opens his mouth because it can see his 'it's time to call Geordi' cluster of neurons going off.

Doesn't explain how it works when they're away from the ship, unless all that power is contained within each combadge (which, maybe it could be. The original UT was just like, a tube.)

>>65756As far as 4x01 goes that struck me too. At first I'd guess as the theme of ENT is "out of their depth and catching up" they hadn't programmed their shit to even consider that they ended up in the right place but just not temporally. But then I thought that their dumb computers would probably have turned up errors like "star alignment mismatch" though even then. While they wouldn't have "this isn't 22nd century earth" flashing up on their screens I'm sure SOMETHING would have happened and the computers would be having a shit fit.

As far as the augments go I think it's probably bad writing but I feel this one is more permissible.

We know the Klingons have gotten more pretentiously warrior obsessed over the years. The klingon scientist in that arc talks about it, but it just keeps getting worse by the time TNG rolls around. Culminating in Whorf needing to kill ANOTHER leader because shit has gotten that bad. Pretentious warrior posturing has overtaken everything including true honour. I would note that while Whorf is not a true klingon he enjoys the comfy captain's chair when he commands the enterprise. The augments meanwhile are not klingons, maybe they just stole some quilting or made it because why the fuck not? Maybe they had MDF to sleep on but raided a place and one of them (given their sharp augmented minds, more believable) thought "Yeah, lets get bedding" so they grabbed some.

I was wondering when people have one world together, do they taper down the majority races so they are all equally uniform in numbers or do they leave them like they are and restrict the numbers of children? So there would be many Asian people in the Trek Earth world?

I mean nothing explicit is ever said about this, but don't you think that kind of flies in the face of UFP ideology? There's no overpopulation crisis since they have thousands of worlds to colonize, so I'm sure people would breed however they want.

By that account, there should be more mixed race humans than anything else, and then mostly Chinese and Indians, with small handfuls of the remaining races.

However, maybe the Eugenics Wars and WWIII killed off large portions of the asiatic populations, which is why we see the proportion of races we do.

>>65769 Hay thanks you right, I suppose they would either export people to another area of the planet or to another colony, or they would have to restrict the numbers of children in some of the areas on the planet. Possibly the way we are made up from pasts of humans on Earth, is baseline people are larger in populations to the tops of the pyramid, so it could quantumly sway if you let the doors open to us into space. Eugenics Wars and WWIII will have to look into.

>>65769Also more developed societies slow down their population growth rates. Earth is going to level off in our life times (assuming nothing goes horribly wrong) and most of the developed world already relies on immigrants to keep the numbers up.

The biggest question for me is how humanity has kept expanding. Colonisation is dangerous and spreads people thinner. Maybe this want to create a new life drives population growth. Maybe the post scarcity lifestyle means people don't have to work as many hours and/or have better work/life balance and feel happier having kids. I don't know. But there has to be a change in current trends or else the population would already be in declined by the time warp was invented. Wars aside.

Larry Niven's Hublanders would probably eventually happen, but that's what happened when everyone had cheap easily accessible instant transport for a few hundred years which even earth lack on that scale.

>>65780Well it's important to remember that populations decline on earth in developed societies due to specific circumstances. As development increases, education increases, so does knowledge about problems like overpopulation. But moreover, as the society shifts from an industrial to a service based economy, the cost of raising each child goes up and so the best strategy for ensuring your children's success is to have fewer children.

A post-scarcity, interstellar earth civilization would be fantastically more developed, but wouldn't necessarily have any of those other features. The more educated people would understand the value of space colonization as an insurance against extinction, and so the more socially responsible people would have more, rather than less, kids (like it was in the distant past.) And, since they are post scarcity, even though it costs way more to educate each child, that cost means nothing, so there's no incentive to have fewer kids to ensure they get a better chance.

Lastly, in our developed nations in our unusually long period of global peace, the most prestigious jobs are also the safest, whereas the most dangerous jobs are usually held by the lower classes. In UFP it seems that has flipped -- since there is no money, the most valuable thing to people is prestige, and the way people earn prestige is through risk -- i.e. service to humanity, either through colonization, science, exploration in deep space, or defending the Fed in Starfleet. So because humanity is engaging in more high risk endeavours, probably people die a lot more often -- but that also means it is in each parent's best interest to ensure they have the most kids, so even if some of them die (while earning the family prestige for their service) some will survive to pass on DNA.

I think this, if it's the case, really expands that scene where Picard is talking to the rich dude they re-animated from the 20th century, and he is talking down to him because he has a lowly position as a ship's captain. This is hilarious to Picard, not just because of the warm fuzzy statement he gives the guy about life not being about possessions, but because he knows he has one of the most prestigious and sought after roles in his entire society.

In the episode of TNG where Geordi and Ensign Ro get turned invisible by the Romulan space hax, Worf comments (presuming that the two are actually dead) that he is happy for Ro and Geordi to have died honorably, and that death is a happy occasion for Klingons.

This goes against his reaction to Jadzia Dax's death in DS9, to the extent that Worf has to go on some insane mission blowing up Dominion shipyards to avenge her death and make sure that she crosses into Stovakor.

Why did Worf not feel the same way toward Geordi, at least? Because he's not considered a Klingon like Jadzia was (or perhaps because he's not Worf's lover)? It's not like dying in a transporter accident is a really honorable way to go out.

>>65787The best I've got is that Jadzia died while going to say a prayer (i.e not in the line of duty) while Ro and Geordi were "killed" whilst beaming back to their ship having participitated in an away mission as part of their official duties. Worf wasn't afraid to be flushed out of the cargo-bay in Power Play, explicitly saying dying like that would be "the dream of every Klingon" even though it technically wouldn't have been in battle per se.

Whether it's true of Klingons in general or not, Worf clearly places duty above honor and honor in turn above glory and there are hints in Enterprise that this was once truer for the empire in general than it is by the time of the TNG era.

It sucks for Jadzia but religion is a weird thing. Some catholics believe stillborn infants go straight to hell. Most of them aren't evil, they aren't trying to get those poor newborns on a technicality, it's just how they believe the universe works.

>The biggest question for me is how humanity has kept expanding. Colonisation is dangerous and spreads people thinner.

This is fully automated luxury gay space communism, like 1% of the population, max, does anything of earthly value. The other 99% are either colonists or hedonists. Either way, they're having lots of kids.

>>65805 I've seen it in a dream. Captain Kirk and I met up and it was the 60's and we were dancing and having fun with many people, grass patch and trees around us, it went on all day and into the night, had a massive campfire. So groovy, it was the coolest party, loads of fun, dancing in delight with women in the interchange. The colors and clothes in the time were intriguing to say the least. Kirk and I had a special bond of friendship. With looks unparallel towards each other. There was a story about the land they were on and what happened to it, not being under socialism.

>>65807Its like minecraft but only with human contact, drugs orgies and a balanced survival element rather than sperglords griefing each other and then creepers inexplicably ending up in your house.

But seriously, they tame a land, they make it theirs, they build a community of like minded people from scratch and face challenge and hardship, but they can choose how much challenge or call for help if it goes REALLY wrong. Maybe in a few hundred years there will be hundreds or thousands of people with their own culture, art and music and you did that. You don't get to see that bit but you'll see it starting to happen and know those people will always honour you. You set the rules and pick the norms.

So yeah, farming and drug fuelled orgies. Solar power, replicators, reactors etc in case shit goes south but the game is to use them as little as possible and have as much high sex as possible. And because you spend all day in the field everyone is ripped and vigorous.

I was just ribbin ya' and it was a chance to memeify one of my favorite TOS eps, in seriousness it's a legitimate concern and more so by the time of TNG when the Fed is clearly post-scarcity in a more meaningful sense. I mean, why do you need people to be space colonists when you can send in swarms of exocomps?

>> literally the original pilot is a warning against holodecks

There's actually one of the many aspects of the pilot that sometimes completely goes over people's heads. Honestly both it and the second pilot are insanely high concept when you consider what else was on TV at the time. A history of the degradation of the high-concept-ness of ST pilots:

>>The power to fulfill desires without effort is a trap humanity must rise above to realize our destiny in the stars>>We are under the test by entities far beyond our evolutionary level, calling us to account for the dark crimes of history in weight against our ability to imagine definitions of life beyond what we have ever seen before>>humans in space must find a way to balance understanding between different beings with religions, territorial motivations, and conceptions of space-time beyond our comprehension>>we may be hurled to the edge of space by horny space blobs but we will stick to our principles and protect innocence even if it dooms us to wander the unknown>>aliens might try to stifle our expansion in space, but our fate is intertwined in a war from centuries in the future and if we stick to our sheer-cussedness, we can help out aliens who hate us>>humans blunder blindly into situations of total war and abandonment of all their principles because of blind ignorance but get away with it anyway through ???? and spores

Why didn't that Romulan senator inform the rest of the Romulan senate that Sisko just tried to fool him into going to war with the Dominion before he got killed? Was he only going to inform them face-to-face?

>>65815This is also explored in The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer. Basically colonist life sucks so much that there has to be a government subsidized drug trade otherwise all the colonists would kill themselves.

>>65852They specifically drop a line about how he was killed before he ever had a chance to inform any other Romulans. Which is sketchy, but, remember his meeting there was a secret thing in the first place, so perhaps they were concerned about the communication being intercepted.

maybe the scientists on Earth had a fully working machine, probably large, where the signal wasn't lost. It could get stored. I don't know if that means you could create multiple copies. Get an army build-up from 'the right person' in no time. That could be a trek plot. Planet Riker.

>>66096It's actually not as cut and dry as one might think. In the original introduction to the holodeck in "Encounter at Farpoint" Data explains that the holodeck sometimes replicates the objects that you directly interact with, but instead uses forcefields to create more distant objects. By the time we get around to VOY though, it is established a couple of times that all holographic objects are the same, forcefields containing photonic energy.

So basically you can believe either since the canon is self-contradictory.

I think when they drank holodeck synthehol it went down the throat and they could taste it, but then dissipated before the stomach. With TNG Moriarty tried to transport off the holodeck. But I think the secret is you have to completely create a real body then some type of integration as one.

>>66140I mean this is obviously just a production error since Kirk often does things to props that would be impossible if they actually were what they seem to be, but uh, in this case, remember Trelane 'knows all the earth forms, but none of their substance' so likewise maybe he knows how a sword is supposed to be shaped, but not how strong it is.

My head-canon in these moments is that simply the original meaning has shifted in light of societal change. Troi is buying in the sense of going to the bar and ordering then carrying drinks back which can be a pain when it's busy.

>>66166And they clearly know about money and still use idioms which reference money. Crusher says to Picard 'penny for your thoughts' and neither of them either believe it's serious nor are confused by what it means.

At the same time, the reason Kirk tells Spock not to get himself killed once is because it would waste all the money the Federation spent on training him. The post-currency nature of the UFP was a revision for the TNG era, and they may have only come up with it during season 1.

>>66186Because people still want to be served/to serve. You may say 'well, who the hell would want to hand out drinks for a living?' You might if being the best drink hander-outer-er meant you could hand out drinks on the flagship of the federation when you're so dumb you can't tell an EPS conduit or warp field from your own asshole.

Don't forget its only the UFP that is "currency free" supposedly as we have seen many races, including humans, trading, buying, and selling especially in DS9 and Latinum and other things still have value allowing you to purchase things.

At the start of Voyager I believe Kim wanted to buy something from Quark(though it may have been another Ferengi) who would only take latinum and it can't be replicated so they have to earn money somehow.

It really kind of falls apart when you look at it even on a planetary scale. We see Sisko's dad running a restaurant just because he wants and Picard's family running a vineyard for the same reason. I can't really believe that most people are going to just take jobs(outside of starfleet) and work them day in and day out like we do and for no wages. The Maquis had to have some kind of real currency as well.

Subsisting without currency does make sense for a lot of colonies especially those who just want to substance farm on some far off planet but they still have to get supplier as well as a ship and I don't the Starfeet is just giving away ships to take people to new worlds to colonize.

>>66189the technology of the future, you would walk around all the offshore vacation markets with a small scanner, that could replicate anything when you get back. Holographic camera filming as well. The latest iPhone 3million.

>I can't really believe that most people are going to just take jobs(outside of starfleet) and work them day in and day out like we do and for no wages.

The entire idea is that people work because they want to or simply out of a sense of obligation/prestige. Pappa Sisko cooks because that is what he loves to do just as the Picards make wine. I think that is a perfectly plausible explanation given the chef career is not something you would go into for the money. Even today.

There's materials and complexity that replicators can't work on iirc. The very existence of latinum as a form of currency proves it.

We can also see that there is a value system at work that drives a new form of post-scarcity consumerism. People can have a copy-pasted drink whenever they want but they value 'real' goods. I can certainly see that happening in cultural trinkets for tourists while they snap pictures with their printed holocams.

>The entire idea is that people work because they want to or simply out of a sense of obligation/prestige. Pappa Sisko cooks because that is what he loves to do just as the Picards make wine. I think that is a perfectly plausible explanation given the chef career is not something you would go into for the money. Even today.

That's all good regarding resources that are actually are post-scarcity in ST.Some things are not though, for instance living space.

You don't see everybody living in mega-mansions so there has to be some system in place that decides who gets to live where and how.We don't know what are the limitations regarding housing constructions I suppose it's not simply replicate & transport but something more energy efficient.Regardless if there isn't something akin to currency for housing it has to be some sort of bureaucracy that dictates ones options, which to be honest would suck.

The Picards, who make wine for a living (which can't be all that lucrative in a post-scarcity society) live on what must be dozens of acres in a pretty large house. Ensign Kim and Lt. Barclay's apartments on earth are huge, despite being in San Francisco (which doesn't have any space left even in the 21st century.) So obviously people who live on earth don't have unlimited space, but what they get (which is presumably handed out evenly according to their effort) is luxurious even by decadent modern standards.

And if you want unlimited space, just become a colonist.

>> if there isn't something akin to currency

There's all kinds of currency, and clearly one of the most important ones to the UFP is social capital. Maybe the way you get to move where you want to is by convincing the people who already live there that you would be a good addition to their community, and maybe the way you prove that is with highly documented social capital.

"Uhm, I know there's not many apartments left in the Haight, but I think I would be a good addition to your community. I'm a decorated diagnostic engineer with starfleet, and I produce wholesome, flattering holonovels featuring my close friends, in my spare time in a way that doesn't interfere with my work. I'm definitely not a recovering holoaddict or registered with the space sex crimes division. Won't you please vote yes for Reg at the next admissions meeting?'

You actually raise an interesting point. The basic economic problem is unlimited needs and wants and limited resources. I've always assumed this doesn't mean needs are unlimited, but that needs and wants compete for resources and in total are unlimited (because wants are unlimited). And given that people literally starve while others have food mountains real life seems to agree. Anyway the Trek post scarcity seems to be that needs are satisfied but that while wants are quite well filled they are still unlimited. However everyone gets at least a few of theirs. As opposed to some people not getting heating and food while in the same country people have an egg boiling every 3 minutes in case the master of the house comes in and requires an eggy right now.

Bear in mind that living space is essentially unlimited, it's just if you want specific space in specific quantities near other things then it becomes limited. However I think this is going to work much better for most people.

I mean right now you can work full time and not be able to afford a bedsit if you're in the wrong place. And you can bet with a functional public transport system getting to work is quicker so location is less crucial. And without mass deprivation and violence the difference between the best and worst areas would be hugely compressed. Personally I am looking at my options, I am a mean earner (which is to say I earn the average amount or more than about 60% of the population in my country because of the way income distribution works) and I cannot afford a house unless I move far enough to have to give up my job. If I get promoted again so then I'll be in the top third, I will be able to afford a 2 bedroom flat in one of the less nice areas within a few minutes commute of my place of work. In our capital city there are thousands of empty top end flats, they are bought and speculated on. The people who would buy them instead get the nice suburban houses, driving the prices up for those and forcing out the upper middle class, in short this cascades out of the capital and about 100 miles in every direction. As a result house prices nationwide rise at an above inflation rate while we have enough empty homes to house everyone. House prices are unsustainably high and often developers sell the house but keep the land "renting" it to the new owners for a fee which rises exponentially while they literally do nothing. And because people are fucked the rent market is even crazier. Landlords just don't give a fuck and house their tenants in deathtraps, often turning normal houses into multiple "flats" and then not even legally registering them as separate addresses.

With the sort of supercomputer processing power you'd have for shuffling houses around, you could probably get most people a pretty good compromise and I imagine such a system might even account for how willing people are to move, with those who are more flexible getting a chance to be shuffled somewhere nicer eventually if they're a bit patient. Mostly though, every house will be fit for purpose, every house will be sufficient.

You won't get a mega mansion but that's also because humans are past that shit. Mega mansions are for stupid fucking assholes. I mean if you have 5 kids and the extended family in maybe you need a mini mansion but then it's not one for everyone, it's one in the place of 3 houses. Everyone's going to get a couple of rooms to host or do stuff like turn into a study, gym, music room or whatever and maybe a guest bedroom but who the fuck actually needs an acre or more of land unless they're growing things? And in the latter case those people would get that land because it's their career and any production without replicators reduces the need to use replicator power to feed people and thus allows the general populace even more resources for a higher definition Vulcan Love Slave experience.

"Uhm, I know there's not many apartments left in the Haight, but I think I would be a good addition to your community. I'm a decorated diagnostic engineer with starfleet, and I produce wholesome, flattering holonovels featuring my close friends, in my spare time in a way that doesn't interfere with my work. I'm definitely not a recovering holoaddict or registered with the space sex crimes division. Won't you please vote yes for Reg at the next admissions meeting?' Hehe, yeah that's pretty much how I'd imagine this would work in the ST society too.

>n our capital city there are thousands of empty top end flats, they are bought and speculated on. The people who would buy them instead get the nice suburban houses, driving the prices up for those

I guess it's hard to imagine a post-scarcity society when it comes to housing in the current economic climate.

>You won't get a mega mansion but that's also because humans are past that shit. Mega mansions are for stupid fucking assholes.

Agreed, that people would have to be past that seems to be a given.

> And you can bet with a functional public transport system getting to work is quicker so location is less crucial.

Regarding the ST public transport system, it has to be (according the few TNG, DS9 & VOY episodes taking place on "tng area" "earth" in one way or the other)Must be some sort of Subway like system where trains are replaced with huge transporter pads, (which btw must mean they tell you transport is the safest way of travel). That periodically activate and take you anywhere on the planet sent over transporter relays in orbit.My nick-picky answer to that would be: If it really works that way, why is location on the planet still regarded as important. Starfleet headquarters (why is there such a thing if the planet is in walking distance) is in SF, which again should maybe be an historical landmark, not a central economic zone. I guess this was done to leave in something relatable/other writing reason, but from a pure world-building perspective that's still something to be considered.

I doubt they would have such a thing as inheritance. So the place you have is the only thing that could be of value. Everyone's children already get a place, so they don't need your place unless they want to live there. Do you need to live there? If so there could be computerized commandments that could quantify it for you. Background/Jobs. Places might not ever increase in value over the long term, period. That's the way I would do it.

>>66212Inheritance will still apply to sentimental items. You won't keep money or investments because they don't exist for most people but you might keep your great-great-great grandmother's medals from world war 3 or your uncle in star fleet might give you his alien flute from a culture that died 10000 years ago if you don't die offscreen while he's still commanding the enterprise or something.

>>66211I'm not sure if they'd have transporter transport, it's quite energy intense. I forget which officer says they used their transporter rations up doing a thing during academy. Ironically there's probably shuttles and subways. However I guess a mass transport with preconfigured destinations may be more efficient. Transport probably is the safest way of travel, however if you have automated transit without human elements that's probably still going to be safe to the point that a crash is international news.

Location becomes about the local weather, geography and immediate community mostly. However if stuff is within walking distance and doesn't need transporting then it's still "more local". I imagine Sisko's place gets a lot of random tourists from worldwide but it probably has a lot of local visitors who work or live within a mile or so and just stroll over to eat for dinner or lunch.

Sisko says that he used a months worth of rations in a week to come home for dinner every night, but that after the first week he stopped. Which means they get around 7 transports a month (or perhaps 5 if we're only talking school days...assuming the working week in the federation is like ours, which is already a stretch.) Which honestly doesn't sound like a lot. It would just be enough to go home every weekend + a couple other destinations, and we have to assume starfleet cadets get more of these rations than civvies. I mean on the one hand its just a throwaway line meant to be relatable so we can't take it too seriously, but you have to think that the warp reactors they have for power on earth could be so much larger than those in starships, it wouldn't really be an issue.

Of course, the tricky variable might be the scarcity of dilithium to control warp reactions. Its useful to remember scarcity is always relative, and while they are post-scarcity in terms of the things that we currently care about and are scarce, they are still limited by scarcity on a higher level.

>>66214So, the Federation already has their territory marked out and should have some idea on numbers and locations of resources. Holly, they must have ascertained the amounts of Dilithium that are out there. They already know its an in-between step for another type of power supply. Using it up as a non renewable resource is like coal or petroleum in the trading. Like Uranium currently being used, there are higher energy focuses.

>>66262We have enough uranium to last us a good ten thousand years. Unless dilithium is super rare, the Federation probably does have knowledge of dilithium reserves and probably has some kind of projection of future resource use. But if it's like uranium and they have enough to last them long into the foreseeable future, they're probably more worried about the Romulans, Dominion, Borg, and all the other nasty fuckers they share a galaxy with.

The real bad guy in the universe though is most probably entropy, at least ultimately, just as it is on Earth today.

Hey I just saw the s5 episode "The Game" for the first time in awhile.. and how the fuck is Geordi supposed to play a game that shoots lasers into your eyeballs to fuck with your brain? He's literally the first person Riker asks to play it

>>66291If I recall correctly he takes his visor off to use it, right? So we know the visor works because his optic nerve is intact, so what causes his blindness is some sort of mechanical problem with the eye or retina. If the game sends impulses directly to the optic nerve rather than using pulses of light (like it is depicted as) it could work.

But the real answer is they were just hoping we would ignore that. It would have more sense to have the game use sound, but that wouldn't have looked as good on screen.

>>66282You answered it. If they are going at it with whomever then they should have thousands of years of energy stocks. With all the free energy why they do they ration it out like snake bite venom. The would have already gathered all the Dilithium they know about because it's in their control, not possible taken.

>>66293maybe it's to keep the grid available in case of various emergencies that might require a populace to be mass transported, space thing deflected, and Inner Party wanting to get there really quick

>>66293Or like how in Stellaris when you get towards endgame at some point theres just no way for you spend all your energy i usually generate between 1.5-2K energy every turn and have 175+k saved, theres just no project or galactic wonder that would even make a sizeable dent

Oh wow i just reread that and realized I am not on /vg/. Whatever still sorta pertains, I mean lets say that dilithium is spread evenly across all the races (its probably not but work with me) Trek makes it seem that either generator technology is almost perfect or that dilithium is an almost perfect energy source (iirc they do run low on dilithium a few times in TOS and TNG and VOY). So a small amount could probably power a colony for a decade and the shit seems to be fucking everywhere, I doubt energy concerns would even factor into Federation policies or thinking. Even hijacking or sabotaging enemy stores of dilithium would probably be pointless jnless you destroyed a whole planets worth of the shit

>>66355lots of things aren't visible in Trek universe until you need them, things in people quarters for example, and an intercom system that far in the future would likely look nothing like them today and could very well be automated.

>>66364Hes too zany in a Jar jar sort of way. Like it feels like hes a bit forced. Im not far into Voyager but I kinda wish he'd do more shit like he did when the met him. Some con man pirate like shit. Instead hes just the obnoxious cook.

Jar Jar is a good comparison. Neelix could actually have been a great character if they actually played him as some kind of genocide survivor who's somewhat put a life back together. But for some inexplicable reason he's always sussing around in an apron going "ooohhheeeee yes Mr. Vulcan!" and then promptly fucking up by getting bitten by some kind of venomous animal or being the one who gets a disease this week instead of Kim etc.

Sure, I'd concede that in real life there are probably at least a few people who have survived assorted holocausts and were able to just move on from the whole thing, but that doesn't make for terribly rich character development

But that's what makes him a Voyager character. There's an amazing story here hiding behind the scenes that unfortunately was told poorly in the actual production.

>>66369What I noticed about Neelix is he has informed competence. On average he actually displays it once per season. I agree, the Neelix on paper was a good character but he suffered from being in Voyager so his competence is mostly offscreen and he gets used every time someone needs kind, bumbling, insecure etc but not when they need worldly or shrewd.

There's a few episodes when you see the character we're told he is, and if he was like that more than once a year he'd be a cool character. The Neelix who puts laxative in the fake 2vac's food and pretends mind melds are brutal in the fake voyager scam episode, or the Neelix who helps the lift get into space had to compete with a whole host of competent starfleet personnel.

I'm of the opinion that Neelix would have worked a lot better if he were constantly punished like DS9 Obrien. He could still be a little goofy as long as its shown that it's just a coping mechanism and he's barely holding it all together. The best Neelix episodes are the one where he's tortured (for instance when his lungs are stolen)

If there had been anything resembling character development in Voyager, Neelix would have probably come to be a respectable character at the very least. Neelix had multiple times where his cheery facade fractured here and there for brief moments, but we never got to see the real him.

We never got an episode where Neelix finally loses his shit, loses his cheeryness and we get to see what kind of person he REALLY is underneath it all. But that's just Voyager. 7 years in the Delta Quadrant, and Voyager comes home shiny as the day she left dock and it's like they've been gone 7 weeks.

>>65109Let's aso not forget a real military probably had power armor users as comon place.that EP where quark starts showing off weapons in the holosuit shows a power armor or at least a battle robot getting blasted by a fuck huge hand held laser canon. But the Federation doesn't seem to place that much importance on weapons and armor. Even the guy full of holes that jake stumbles across is just wearing a black jumpsuit and has the standard phaser rifle. You'd think every one would have some serious dense and resistant armor in a light easy to wear form with a small shield generator built in.

I'll also say it again, I'd like to see data use the full extent of his physical ability in the form of anime. You see him move so fucking fast in some fast some times yet in action scenes he is about as mobile as Picard.

I think a portable shield generator makes sense but I feel like armour isn't going to do much most of the time. A standard phaser rifle will blow through chunks of solid metal. Klingons are "warrior" obsessed and they lack power armour. The Jem Hadar are cheap and expendable but they are about having the most resource efficient army so effective power armour or whatever is obviously impractical. Maybe the resources required to get 10 suits going with trained users could get 500 dudes with phasers and enough training to shoot straight and they'll mince those suits without too many casualties and actually take less logistical support. Maybe instead of walking light tanks you just bring a shuttle in for the same resources, fewer crew and can pack bunker busting torpedos as well as a monstrous phaser and much better shielding and the ability to fly and and teleport things.

>>66545I guess it depends how good the armor is at stopping phaser rifles or similar small arms fire. As we saw when muskets really started seeing common use armor started getting trimmed down piece by piece until it was just regular clothing, and then slowly armor came back until current soldiers have plate armor all over again.

same thing happened with the Borg, the writers of Trek have a tendency to do that. sure, it's tempting to use your invincible, omnipotent, mysterious beings a lot, but doing so inevitably demystifies them and turns them into a joke. the Borg started out as a genuinely terrifying threat, an invincible transhumanist socialist collective bent on enslaving the universe through bodily violations, but by the end of Voyager they were just another shambling alien of the week to be defeated handily. the Kazon were a more believable threat to the ship, and just look at them

>>66586The problem with an overarching villain is that it requires the story to revolve about nothing else. As was the case with the Dominion.Had the Borg been on that level (based on the initial premise) we would have had nothing but Borg related plots for the latter half of TNG and pretty much all of VOY.The writers just didn't want to do that.

>>66589Its 'cause the bajoran sun had a photosphere that could be disrupted via an inverted tachyon pulse wave rerouted through the forward deflector grid that would cause ionizing radiation to fluctuate through its ionic layers to destablize the neutrino core and cause it to seperate its hydronium-oxide components and create a neutronium meltdown resulting in complete particle destabilaztion.Its like overinflating a balloon.

>>66591Is their sun so fruity cause of the wormhole or vice versa? How'd all those neutrinos get in there in the first place? Isn't neutrino the handwavium particle they select whenever they're talking about the wormhole?

Neutrinos are the real life by-product of high energy atomic reactions; fusion (as in any sun), anti-matter, etc. Trek has all sorts of made-up/embellished sub atomic particles and radiation so they show up in those reactions too. Whatever crazy energy sustains the wormhole reasonably pumps them out.

>>66617Well that's kinda the point of my question. Do we know that it's that the wormhole pumps them out? Maybe the reason the wormhole formed at all was because the Bajoran sun was so neutrino rich to begin with.

>Its 'cause the bajoran sun had a photosphere that could be disrupted via an inverted tachyon pulse wave rerouted through the forward deflector grid that would cause ionizing radiation to fluctuate through its ionic layers to destablize the neutrino core and cause it to seperate its hydronium-oxide components and create a neutronium meltdown resulting in complete particle destabilaztion.

>>66543>>66545It's always been my head canon that Starfleet uniforms incorporate some form of passive protection, like a matrix capable of absorbing energy. Given that they transport power throughout their ships with often-exploding plasma conduits, it makes sense for everyone to always have this protection. I'm mostly basing this on the fact that energy weapon hits are very often not instantly lethal. Given that these weapons blow chunks out of bulkheads, turn stones red hot on lower settings (I have always loved that Starfleet survival trick, BTW), and outright vaporize people on higher settings it stands to reason that the standard setting should be expected to be lethal on a good hit.

Stargate SG-1, of course, addressed this trope by doing exactly what I imagine takes place off-screen on Trek: They invent special armor that stops staff blasts, thus explaining how O'Neill keeps absorbing them with frightening regularity.

>>66647exploding consoles aren't a bug they're a featuremuch of the UFP is about killing peopleif you don't get killed you live to be a million like bones so they make everything kill people all the time

>>66648That's probably why they put entire families on the same ship. That sort of thing was not allowed ever again after three brothers died on a single ship during WW2, though it wasn't entire families just service men.